The Continuity of Adversity: Negative Emotionality Links Early Life Adversity With Adult Stressful Life Events.

Adversity that exhibits continuity across the life course has long-term detrimental effects on physical and mental health. Using 920 participants from the Dunedin Study, we tested the following hypotheses: (1) children (ages 3-15) who experienced adversity would also tend to experience adversity in adulthood (ages 32-45), and (2) interim personality traits in young adulthood (ages 18-26) would help account for this longitudinal association. Children who experienced more adversity tended to also experience more stressful life events as adults, β=.

Co-occurrence between mental disorders and physical diseases: a study of nationwide primary-care medical records.

Background: Mental disorders and physical-health conditions frequently co-occur, impacting treatment outcomes. While most prior research has focused on single pairs of mental disorders and physical-health conditions, this study explores broader associations between multiple mental disorders and physical-health conditions.

Methods: Using the Norwegian primary-care register, this population-based cohort study encompassed all 2 203 553 patients born in Norway from January 1945 through December 1984, who were full-time residents from January 2006 until December 2019 (14 years; 363 million person-months).

Accelerated epigenetic aging and prospective morbidity and mortality among U.S. veterans.

Epigenetic measures of aging derived from DNA methylation are promising biomarkers associated with prospective morbidity and mortality, but require validation in real-world medical settings. Using data from 2,216 post-9/11 veterans, we examined whether accelerated DunedinPACE aging scores were associated with chronic disease morbidity, predicted healthcare costs, and mortality assessed over an average of 13.1 years of follow up in VA electronic health records.

A nationwide analysis of 350 million patient encounters reveals a high volume of mental-health conditions in primary care.

How many primary-care encounters are devoted to mental-health conditions compared with physical-health conditions? Here we analyzed Norway's nationwide administrative primary-care records, extracting all doctor-patient encounters occurring during 14 years (2006-2019) for the population aged 0-100 years. Encounters were recorded according to the International Classification of Primary Care. We compared the volume of mental-health encounters against volumes for conditions in multiple different body systems.

Adult Physical Function Has Roots in Early Childhood Brain Function: A Five-Decade Cohort Study.

Objectives: Tests of physical function are often thought to measure functioning that is (1) musculoskeletal, and (2) newly declining in adult life. In contrast, this study aimed to: (1) add to evidence that physical-function tests also measure brain function, and (2) test the novel hypothesis that adult physical function is associated with brain function beginning in early childhood. We investigated early childhood brain function and midlife physical function in the Dunedin Study, a 5-decade longitudinal birth cohort (n = 1,037).

The general factor of psychopathology (p): Choosing among competing models and interpreting p.

Over the past 10 years, the general factor of psychopathology, p, has attracted interest and scrutiny. We review the history of the idea that all mental disorders share something in common, p; how we arrived at this idea; and how it became conflated with a statistical representation, the Bi-Factor Model. We then leverage the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) longitudinal twin study to examine the properties and nomological network of different statistical representations of p.

Genetic associations with parental investment from conception to wealth inheritance in six cohorts.

Genetic inheritance is not the only way parents' genes may affect children. It is also possible that parents' genes are associated with investments into children's development. We examined evidence for links between parental genetics and parental investments, from the prenatal period through to adulthood, using data from six population-based cohorts in the UK, US and New Zealand, together totalling 36,566 parents.

Which Types of Stress Are Associated With Accelerated Biological Aging? Comparing Perceived Stress, Stressful Life Events, Childhood Adversity, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Objective: Stress and stressful events are associated with poorer health; however, there are multiple ways to conceptualize and measure stress and stress responses. One physiological mechanism through which stress could result in poorer health is accelerated biological aging. This study tested which types of stress were associated with accelerated biological aging in adulthood.

Improving risk indexes for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias for use in midlife.

Knowledge of a person's risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs) is required to triage candidates for preventive interventions, surveillance, and treatment trials. ADRD risk indexes exist for this purpose, but each includes only a subset of known risk factors. Information missing from published indexes could improve risk prediction.

Preparedness for healthy ageing and polysubstance use in long-term cannabis users: a population-representative longitudinal study.

Background: Cannabis is often characterised as a young person's drug. However, people who began consuming cannabis in the 1970s and 1980s are no longer young and some have consumed it for many years. This study tested the preregistered hypothesis that long-term cannabis users show accelerated biological ageing in midlife and poorer health preparedness, financial preparedness, and social preparedness for old age.

Childhood Adversity and Midlife Health: Shining a Light on the Black Box of Psychosocial Mechanisms.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with poorer health, which has spurred public health efforts to reduce the number of adverse events children experience. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that all ACEs can be prevented. For adults who already experienced ACEs in childhood, what psychological, social, and behavioral intervention targets might reduce risk for negative health outcomes? To provide insight into the "black box" of psychosocial mechanisms linking ACEs to poor health, our study used data from the Dunedin Study, a longitudinal cohort assessed from birth to age 45.

Association of Pace of Aging Measured by Blood-Based DNA Methylation With Age-Related Cognitive Impairment and Dementia.

Background And Objectives: DNA methylation algorithms are increasingly used to estimate biological aging; however, how these proposed measures of whole-organism biological aging relate to aging in the brain is not known. We used data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) and the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) Offspring Cohort to test the association between blood-based DNA methylation measures of biological aging and cognitive impairment and dementia in older adults.

Methods: We tested 3 "generations" of DNA methylation age algorithms (first generation: Horvath and Hannum clocks; second generation: PhenoAge and GrimAge; and third generation: DunedinPACE, Dunedin Pace of Aging Calculated from the Epigenome) against the following measures of cognitive impairment in ADNI: clinical diagnosis of dementia and mild cognitive impairment, scores on Alzheimer disease (AD) / Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRD) screening tests (Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale, Mini-Mental State Examination, and Montreal Cognitive Assessment), and scores on cognitive tests (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, Logical Memory test, and Trail Making Test).

Deep-seated psychological histories of COVID-19 vaccine hesitance and resistance.

To design effective pro-vaccination messaging, it is important to know "where people are coming from"-the personal experiences and long-standing values, motives, lifestyles, preferences, emotional tendencies, and information-processing capacities of people who end up resistant or hesitant toward vaccination. We used prospective data from a 5-decade cohort study spanning childhood to midlife to construct comprehensive early-life psychological histories of groups who differed in their vaccine intentions in months just before COVID vaccines became available in their country. Vaccine-resistant and vaccine-hesitant participants had histories of adverse childhood experiences that foster mistrust, longstanding mental-health problems that foster misinterpretation of messaging, and early-emerging personality traits including tendencies toward extreme negative emotions, shutting down mentally under stress, nonconformism, and fatalism about health.

Lower COVID-19 Incidence in Low-Continentality West-Coast Areas of Europe.

In March 2020, the first known cases of COVID-19 occurred in Europe. Subsequently, the pandemic developed a seasonal pattern. The incidence of COVID-19 comprises spatial heterogeneity and seasonal variations, with lower and/or shorter peaks resulting in lower total incidence and higher and/or longer peaks resulting higher total incidence.

Association of Treatable Health Conditions During Adolescence With Accelerated Aging at Midlife.

Importance: Biological aging is a distinct construct from health; however, people who age quickly are more likely to experience poor health. Identifying pediatric health conditions associated with accelerated aging could help develop treatment approaches to slow midlife aging and prevent poor health in later life.

Objective: To examine the association between 4 treatable health conditions in adolescence and accelerated aging at midlife.

DunedinPACE, a DNA methylation biomarker of the pace of aging.

Background: Measures to quantify changes in the pace of biological aging in response to intervention are needed to evaluate geroprotective interventions for humans. Previously, we showed that quantification of the pace of biological aging from a DNA-methylation blood test was possible (Belsky et al., 2020).

Are macular drusen in midlife a marker of accelerated biological ageing?

Clinical Relevance: Macular drusen are associated with age-related maculopathy but are not an ocular manifestation or biomarker of systemic ageing.

Background: Macular drusen are the first sign of age-related maculopathy, an eye disease for which age is the strongest risk factor. The aim of this cohort study was to investigate whether macular drusen in midlife - a sign of the earliest stages of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) - are associated with accelerated biological ageing more generally.

Lower Cardiovascular Reactivity is Associated with More Childhood Adversity and Poorer Midlife Health: Replicated Findings from the Dunedin and MIDUS Cohorts.

Cardiovascular reactivity has been proposed as a biomarker linking childhood adversity and poorer health. The current study examined the association of childhood adversity, cardiovascular reactivity, and health in the Dunedin (=922) and MIDUS studies (=1,015). In both studies, participants who experienced more childhood adversity had lower cardiovascular reactivity.

Vital personality scores and healthy aging: Life-course associations and familial transmission.

Objectives: Personality traits are linked with healthy aging, but it is not clear how these associations come to manifest across the life-course and across generations. To study this question, we tested a series of hypotheses about (a) personality-trait prediction of markers of healthy aging across the life-course, (b) developmental origins, stability and change of links between personality and healthy aging across time, and (c) intergenerational transmission of links between personality and healthy aging. For our analyses we used a measure that aggregates the contributions of Big 5 personality traits to healthy aging: a "vital personality" score.

Linking stressful life events and chronic inflammation using suPAR (soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor).

Stressful life events have been linked to declining health, and inflammation has been proposed as a physiological mechanism that might explain this association. Using 828 participants from the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, we tested whether people who experienced more stressful life events during adulthood would show elevated systemic inflammation when followed up in midlife, at age 45. We studied three inflammatory biomarkers: C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and a newer biomarker, soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR), which is thought to index systemic chronic inflammation.

Autistic traits are associated with faster pace of aging: Evidence from the Dunedin study at age 45.

Growing evidence indicates that the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are distributed throughout the general population; hence, understanding the correlates of aging in people with high autistic traits could shed light on ASD and aging. 915 members of the Dunedin longitudinal birth cohort completed a measure of autistic traits at age 45. A composite measure of the "pace of aging" was derived by tracking the decline in 19 biomarkers across ages 26, 32, 38, and 45 years.

Disparities in the pace of biological aging among midlife adults of the same chronological age have implications for future frailty risk and policy.

Some humans age faster than others. Variation in biological aging can be measured in midlife, but the implications of this variation are poorly understood. We tested associations between midlife biological aging and indicators of future frailty-risk in the Dunedin cohort of 1037 infants born the same year and followed to age 45.

Association of History of Psychopathology With Accelerated Aging at Midlife.

Importance: Individuals with mental disorders are at an elevated risk of developing chronic age-related physical diseases. However, it is not clear whether psychopathology is also associated with processes of accelerated aging that precede the onset of age-related disease.

Objective: To test the hypothesis that a history of psychopathology is associated with indicators of accelerated aging at midlife.